New video footage of Challenger Space Shuttle disaster unearthed

Cape Canaveral
-
Previously unseen footage of the Challenger disaster has surfaced over a quarter of a century after the tragic explosion that claimed the lives of seven crew members including school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

The amateur video was posted on New Scientist recently after being unearthed in Hicksville, New York.

The chilling, raw footage was filmed from the airport in Orlando, Florida by a registered nurse Bob Karman, whose daughter Kim works for New Scientist. Kim can be seen in the beginning of the video at the age of the 3-years-old watching the shuttle from 80 kilometers away from the launch site.

Karman told New Scientist, "After shooting the video, I had a sense that something went wrong but it wasn't until we were on the plane that the pilot confirmed the tragedy."

The home video shows the first few minutes of the launch that killed astronauts Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik, 73 seconds after liftoff on its tenth mission.

Karman had the tape digitalized from VHS last month after he discovered he had one of a few rare amatuer videos of the disaster in his possession.

Another video showing the Challenger tragedy surfaced in 2011, filmed in Winter Haven, Fla. The video was posted to YouTube by the owners. It shows a stream of white smoke following the space shuttle that eventually splits into two when the shuttle explosion occurred.

In both videos the spectators are aware there is problem of some kind but are unsure what is taking place before their eyes. They later learned of the explosion from live news broadcasts.